There are numerous situations where it is desirable to separate component parts of a mixture. For example, subquality natural gas wells typically contain the sought after natural gas (CH4) along with contaminants such as carbon dioxide (CO2), Nitrogen (N2), and hydrogen sulfide (H2S). By some estimates, the United States has trillions of cubic fee of subquality natural gas that requires processing to separate out the contaminants from the natural gas. In another example, water sources, such as retention ponds, abandoned mines, reservoirs, lakes, seas, and the like, may contain various substances such as salt, arsenic, iron, copper, lead, zinc, cadmium, other metals, and fertilizer and insecticide run off. Such substances can render the water source unusable, and can seep into the water table and have devastating affects on water quality over broad geographic areas.
Numerous conventional devices exist that can separate components of a mixture. Many conventional devices, however, are burdened with various deficiencies, such as high cost, installation complication, maintenance costs and frequency, and remote location deployment. For example, current sour natural gas separation technology may be characterized as a small processing facility that uses filtration and chemical treatment and requires a continuous source of power, and that is expensive to deploy and maintain. In many remote sour gas well locations, such conventional technology can be prohibitively expensive to install and operate. As a result, many gas wells with potentially good yields cannot be brought into production.
It is with this background in mind that the various embodiments of the present invention were developed.